Elaine Viets is a Midwestern American newspaperwoman and mystery writer. A native of the working-class white southside of St. Louis, Missouri, the statuesque Viets has a degree in journalism and became a long-time popular media figure in St. Louis. She was a regular columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for twenty-five years, her columns focusing mostly on local issues and human-interest fare. She also hosted the local light-news television program Viets Beat, for which she won Emmy Awards in 1989 and 1990. After moving to Washington, D.C. and leaving the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Viets wrote a syndicated column carried by United Feature Syndicate and later by United Media. She also began writing mystery novels, and eventually left the newspaper business almost entirely to become a full-time novelist. Viets first drew on her professional experience to produce four novels set in St. Louis and featuring fictional St. Louis newspaper columnist Francesca Vierling. By the time she had written the last of these, Viets had relocated to Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1997, which became the locale for her next novels, the Dead-End Jobs series. [More at Wikipedia]